This charming, fanciful Festival favourite about hitting the road with a truck full of movies is the latest gentle antidote to Bollywood confectionery from inveterate independent, Dev Benegal (English, August). Inexpensive though his film may be by Bollywood standards, Benegal had to look to the US and the producers of In the Bedroom and Lost in Translation to get this unequivocally Indian film made.
“There is an immense likeability to Road, Movie... Set in the barren desert landscapes of an unfamiliar India, it offers a picaresque journey of self-discovery ...Road, Movie is inevitably episodic and even far-fetched in places but it unfolds with such composure and understatement that it cannot help but beguile.
Abhay Deol plays Vishnu, a young man desperate to escape a future working as a salesman for his father’s hair oil business. He relishes the chance to drive his uncle’s 1940s Chevy truck across the desert to a museum. Along the way, the cast of characters grows to include a cheeky sidekick in the shape of a runaway boy, a wise mentor in old desert wanderer Om, and a beautiful gypsy woman (Tannishtha Chatterjee). Vishnu soon learns that the truck was once a travelling cinema, a reflection of the director’s own past working with a touring cinema in India...
The film does not shy away from some of the danger or violence on the road but constantly chooses to accentuate the positive and do nothing that might needlessly spoil a pleasant journey... If some viewers might have welcomed a little more bite to the story, most audiences will respond to its wholesome nature, the way Michel Amathieu captures the raw beauty of the sunlight landscapes, the vibrant eclecticism of Michael Brook’s score and the lyrical reflections on love, friendship and the ability to take charge of our own destinies.” — Allan Hunter, Screendaily
“Road, Movie will draw a rush of recognition from anyone who has travelled the back roads of India. For everyone else, here is your new Cinema Paradiso.” — Cameron Bailey, Toronto International Film Festival
